Pubdate: Mon, 23 Feb 2004
Source: Press Journal (FL)
Copyright: 2004, The E.W. Scripps Co.
Contact:  http://www1.tcpalm.com/tcp/press_journal/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2977
Author: Jay Bergstrom
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v04/n289/a06.html?19232
Note: Titled by MAP

RESPONSE TO OFFICIAL

Andrea G. Barthwell, a deputy despot from the office of the drug czar, 
shows up to propagandize, and the Press Journal follows along, calling all 
dissenting information "myths."

Cannabis was in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia until 1940, when it was stuffed down 
George Orwell's memory hole by one of Barthwell's predecessors.

The office of the drug czar commissioned the Institute of Medicine to 
report on cannabis. In 1999 they reported that it does indeed have 
significant medical uses.

As with alcohol, prohibition is not the way to regulate anything. 
Prohibition yields up control of the market to the criminal underworld. 
District attorneys consistently upgrade charges against users to the status 
of distributors, and the prisons are indeed full of casual users.

If everything that is not harmless were to be prohibited, what a clearly 
authoritarian state we would have. Were users of the addictive substances 
coffee, nicotine, and alcohol imprisoned at the rate of cannabis users, the 
revolt would be immediate.

Wise up America, LEGALIZE.

Jay Bergstrom,

Kernville, Calif.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom